Solar System Census

[cakejedi]

I have finally found my purpose in life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am starting an organization called the P.P.P.P.

PEOPLE for the PRESERVATION of PLANET PLUTO


Anyone want to join my cause

[blueraider1]

mark,

just read it all those numbers make my head swim.

[Trent Lawless]

They're supposed to.

Basically, it all comes down to subjective ideas about how many stars you think have planetary systems and how many of those planets might conceivably have atmospheres and such that could harbor carbon-based life. So it's not like it proves anything. Just showing a range of likelihoods.

I wish I could do justice to some of the ideas in that Centauri Dreams book (the last couple chapters especially). Pick it up at your library or order it if you want to ponder how difficult interstellar travel would be, but yet have hope that we can figure out a way.

[Chris Ingersoll]

markcpc said:

if you want to ponder how difficult interstellar travel would be

I don't need a book to tell me how horrifically difficult this would be. Considering all the intense calculations that go into simply reaching the moon or Mars, even attempting to hit something several light-years away seems like a staggering impossibility without some impressive computational equipment -- and that's without even addressing anything other than just the basic flight path. You add life support, random things like comets/asteroids, and even the very fundamental problem of time/distance, and you start to realize just how blatantly someone like Gene Roddenberry just completely glosses(d) over reality.

But hey: that's why it's called science-fiction.

[blueraider1]

chris,

you forgot food and fuel as well.

[Trent Lawless]

admin said:

You add life support, random things like comets/asteroids,

This was something the book brought up. If we send the craft (manned or not) at the speed we need in order to reach Alpha Centauri (the nearest star system, 4.3 light years away) in about 40 years (1/10th the speed of light, which we're not even close to doing), a speck of dust colliding with the craft would vaporize it.

Chew on that when you're trying to dodge stuff in the void.

EDIT: Oh, and as far as fuel goes, they'd like to do a solar sail type of thing so it wouldn't have to carry a huge payload of fuel, but we have to figure out how to do it so that the sail isn't half the size of Texas!

[blueraider1]

wow

[gwffantrav]

They had a big topic about this (Pluto being banished) on Coast to Coast AM last night. If anyone is a fan and has podcast, they could probably catch the reply on that.

[Chris Ingersoll]

blueraider1 said:

chris,

you forgot food and fuel as well.

I didn't so much forget as I just listed a few problems off the top of my head. The amount of preparation needed for this endeavor would require a "laundry list" several pages long.

(Although food could conceivably not be much of an issue if we can perfect some sort of suspended animation.)

[blueraider1]

ok then

[Pete]

Well, I wouldn't worry too much about this...we know that the UFSP will form and ban professional wrestling no later than 2045, so doubtless something will have been created by then.

Count me in as one who does believe that there's life out there somewhere but is highly, highly skeptical that either civilization will ever find out about the other. The universe may or may not be infinite but it's big enough.

One issue about a truly infinite universe is that it opens up the door to the sort of "parallel universes" that you see in sci-fi. If it's really, truly neverending, then by definition there *has* to be other planets exactly like Earth, but with all the wacky changes said sci-fi stories talk about: an Earth where the Nazis win WW2, an Earth where Ric Flair dies in the plane crash in '75, and an Earth exactly like this one in every way except I have blond hair and perfect vision instead of dark brown hair and 20/250. And so on.

Back to the aliens...the other issue how we establish contact if we do by chance meet up with another civilization. I know Michael Crichton isn't exactly up there with Stephen Hawking when it comes to being an expert in the field, but his book "Sphere" gives you a pretty good run-down of the folly of imagining aliens as anything remotely human. Not just in the two-eyes-and-a-mouth sense but human values and human views of life--that's going to be just as alien to us as their home planet, and we mortal humans have a hard time coming to grips with that.

(Oh, and what did astrologists do in 1930 when Pluto was discovered? Throw a fit? Stick their fingers in their ears or cover their eyes? *snicker* Give the whole thing up?)

[floydthebarber]

Sad to see Pluto get the axe. Along with Jupiter and (of course) Earth...it was my favorite planet. Just 'chillin' out in the far reaches of the solar system...

As for the interstellar space travel debate, that's a great point Mark about the space dust...

Plus, with NASA unwilling to 'lose people in space'...and the sheer cost of R&D...there is no chance we're going to see this in our lifetime (or in our great-grandkids lives)...unless a more advanced race lets us 'copy their paper' so to speak (or they crash and we steal the tech...but I doubt we'd know what to do with it)

Is there intelligent life out there? I think so. Does it have the capacity to travel space? Maybe. Are they here on Earth now (or have they been here before)? Maybe.

[Splattercat]

"Now I'm not saying that I've been everywhere and I've done everything, but I do know it's a pretty amazing planet we live on, and a man would have to be some kind of FOOL to think we're alone in THIS universe."

- Jack Burton